This experiment was renewed four years afterwards by Martin, the legate, who brought from Rome full powers of suspending and excommunicating all priests who refused compliance with his demands; and the king, who relied on him for support to his tottering authority, never failed to uphold these exactions.
Meanwhile, all the chief benefices in the kingdom were conferred on Italians. Great numbers of that nation were sent over at one time to be provided for; non-residence and pluralities were carried to an enormous extent. Mansel, the king's chaplain, is reputed to have held at once 700 ecclesiastical livings; and the abuses became so glaring as to be palpable to the slow-wits of superstition itself. The people, entering into association, rose against the Italian clergy, pillaged their barns, wasted their lands, and insulted the persons of such of them as they found in the kingdom; and when the justices made inquiry into the authors of this disorder, the guilt was found to involve so many, and those of such high rank, that it passed unpunished. At last, when Innocent IV., in 1245, called a general council at Lyons, in order to excommunicate the Emperor Frederick, the king and nobility sent agents to complain before the council of the rapacity of the Romish Church. They represented, among many other grievances, that the benefices of the Italian clergy in England had been estimated, and were found to amount to 60,000 marks a year—a sum which exceeded the annual revenue of the crown itself. They obtained only an evasive answer from the Pope; but as mention had been made before the council of the feudal subjection of England to the See of Rome, the English agents, at whose head was Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, exclaimed against the pretension, and insisted that King John had no right, without the consent of his barons, to subject the kingdom to so ignominious a servitude. The Popes, indeed, afraid of carrying matters too far against England, seem thenceforth to have little insisted on that pretension.
SILVER PENNY OF HENRY III.
This check received at the council of Lyons did not, however, stop the court of Rome in its rapacity. Innocent exacted the revenues of all vacant benefices; the twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues without exception; the third of such as exceeded 100 marks a year, and the half of such as were possessed by non-residents. He claimed the goods of all intestate clergymen; he pretended a title to inherit all money gotten by usury; he levied benevolences upon the people; and when the king, contrary to his usual practice, prohibited these exactions, the Pope threatened to pronounce against him the same censures which he had emitted against the Emperor Frederick.
But the most oppressive expedient employed by the Pope was the embarking of Henry in a project for the acquisition of Sicily, as it was called—an enterprise which threw much dishonour on the king, and involved him during some years in great trouble and expense. The Romish Church, taking advantage of favourable incidents, had reduced the kingdom of Sicily to the same state of feudal vassalage which she pretended to extend over England, and which, by reason of the distance, as well as high spirit, of the latter kingdom she was not able to maintain. After the death of the Emperor Frederick II. the succession of Sicily devolved on Conrad I., son of that monarch, whose half-brother, Manfred, under pretence of governing the kingdom during the minority of the young prince, had formed the ambitious scheme of obtaining the crown himself.
Pope Innocent, who had carried on violent war against the emperor, and desired nothing more ardently than to deprive him of his Italian dominions, still continued hostilities against his successor. He pretended to dispose of the crown of Italy, not only as its temporal lord, but by right of his office as Christ's vicar; and he tendered it to the Earl of Cornwall, whose immense wealth, he flattered himself, would enable him to carry on the war successfully against Manfred.
GOLD PENNY OF HENRY III.
Richard, however, had the good sense to decline the proposal; but when on the death of Conrad in 1254 the offer was made by the Pope to Henry, he accepted the crown for his second son Edmund, and gave the Pontiff unlimited credit to expend whatever money he thought necessary for the subjugation of that kingdom. The consequence was, that he found himself speedily involved in an immense debt, amounting to 135,541 marks.